Women & Infants "Makes Time for Reading"

Release Date: 04/28/2014

It is widely known that reading to and with young children is vital to their academic success. But many parents may not be aware that reading to newborn babies – including those born prematurely – sets that child on the path to being a successful reader.

Women & Infants Hospital’s Transition Home Plus and Partnering with Parents programs received a generous donation of books for babies in the hospital’s Carter Family Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The book, “Making Time for Reading: A Story Guide for Parents of Babies and Young Children,” was written by Weymouth resident Jean Ciborowski Fahey, PhD and illustrated by RISD graduate and Providence resident Peter J. Thornton, and was made possible through contributions from the Auxiliary of Women & Infants Hospital.

The author and illustrator recently came to Women & Infants’ NICU to meet some parents and give out the first autographed copies of the books. That day, books were given to Johnston resident Tamara Palazzo for her son Ronnie Joseph.

About Women & Infants Hospital

Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, a Care New England hospital, is one of the nation’s leading specialty hospitals for women and newborns. A major teaching affiliate of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University for obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics, as well as a number of specialized programs in women’s medicine, Women & Infants is the 9th largest stand-alone obstetrical service in the country and the largest in New England with approximately 8,500 deliveries per year. A Designated Baby-Friendly® USA hospital, U.S.News & World Report 2014-15 Best Children’s Hospital in Neonatology and a 2014 Leapfrog Top Hospital, in 2009 Women & Infants opened what was at the time the country’s largest, single-family room neonatal intensive care unit.

Women & Infants and Brown offer fellowship programs in gynecologic oncology, maternal-fetal medicine, urogynecology and reconstructive pelvic surgery, neonatal-perinatal medicine, pediatric and perinatal pathology, gynecologic pathology and cytopathology, and reproductive endocrinology and infertility. It is home to the nation’s first mother-baby perinatal psychiatric partial hospital, as well as the nation’s only fellowship program in obstetric medicine.